People line up for this Miami baker’s bagels. Now he’s opening a new shop in the Grove

Before Matteson Koche created the beloved bagel business that inspires customers to line up outside his tiny Miami shop every weekend, he worked as an urban planner in Coconut Grove. Koche acted as liaison between the city and the restaurants hoping to set down roots there.

Now, you might say he’s setting down his own roots in the neighborhood: Koche and his partner Simon Caicedo are opening the second location of the popular El Bagel at CocoWalk.

“We always dreamed of having a spot like this,” Koche says now. “They’re kind of hard to come by these days.”

The new location, just around the corner from Cinépolis, is scheduled to open Dec. 1, serving the same hand-rolled bagels that earned El Bagel recognition earlier this year from Bon Appétit. In June, the magazine named the shop’s bagels as some of the “very best” outside of New York.

If you have lived in Miami for any length of time, you know how New Yorkers enjoy raving about their bagels being the best. Bon Appétit even describes El Bagel’s creations as “New York style,” a phrase Koche laughs off.

“We have never claimed to be anything but El Bagel,” he says. “We never told anyone on the Internet or our customers that they’re New York style. We just wanted to make a good quality bagel. We’re not trying to imitate anything else.”

Born in Koche’s kitchen in 2017, El Bagel started as a delivery business, with Koche making the rounds in his car with his product. He went on to open a pop-up at the late, lamented Boxelder Craft Beer Market, first via cart, then from an actual food truck. He opened the first brick-and-mortar shop on Biscayne Boulevard in Miami’s MiMo neighborhood in March of 2020 — just in time to be shut down a little more than a week later when the pandemic lockdown began.

The bright spot? It was a bad time for restaurants, but a great time for takeout, and El Bagel is primarily a takeout spot. The MiMo location has a few benches outside, but most people scoop up their bagels and head home or to work.

Boxelder is gone, but El Bagel lives on (obviously). Like the original shop, the new Grove location will serve a menu of bagels, sandwiches and schmears, with a few twists thrown in.

“We’ll be catering to the UM crowd, so expect more fried stuff, a more hangover-forward menu,” Koche says, laughing.

The bagels will be made every morning at the MiMo shop and then dropped off in the Grove. Koche says bulk sales may be limited because “we can only fit so many bagels in the place.”

But guests should expect to see the sandwiches that have become favorites: the bacon, egg and cheese; the classic Lox Supreme; the pastrami, egg and cheese; the King Guava (with guava marmalade, cream cheese, papitas and a fried egg).

Koche admits to being a fan of the EB Original, with scallion cream cheese, roasted jalapeños and bacon. Sometimes, he’ll just drive around eating a salt bagel.

“It’s my baguette,” he says. “I’ve always got one in my hand.”

Despite the nature of the foot-traffic heavy Grove, the best way to order is still online, unless you enjoy waiting. On weekends, waits at the original El Bagel can take an hour, sometimes even two, but with an online order you get a scheduled time to pick up and can arrive just as the order is ready.

“We’ve got it down to a science now,” Koche says.

The Grove shop isn’t the only new El Bagel on the horizon. Koche and Caicedo are opening a third location at the new Fontainebleau Las Vegas in December. That address is a long way from the food truck days, but Koche hasn’t had much time to contemplate how far El Bagel has come.

“We’re so on the ground now it’s hard to take a step back,” he says. “But I can understand how it sounds pretty nuts. But we’re super excited. We’ve always tried to take it slow and not rush into things. We weren’t looking for trouble by way of expansion. But we ended up being able to grow the brand in a boutique way, not with 40 locations in a two-mile radius. We think we can keep quality and keep it fun.”

El Bagel CocoWalk

Where: 3015 Grand Ave., Miami, #122

Opening: Dec. 1

Hours: 8 a.m.- 2 pm

More information: www.elbagel.com